PM Scott Morrison will miss out on his first private meeting with US President Trump at the upcoming G20 Summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The beleaguered Sco-Mo also faces the prospect of standing alongside Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who faces widespread claims he ordered the killing of a journalist, for a group photo while at the G20 summit in Argentina this weekend.

December 3rd 2018

6 months ago

/display/newscorpaustralia.com/Web/NewsNetwork/Network News/World/

PM Scott Morrison faces a tough time merging the two factions of his Liberal party together. Picture Kym SmithSource:News Corp Australia

OPINION

Back before most Millennials were born there was a strange and mystical place to which people congregated at certain hallowed times, most of these being religious holidays or two-for-one Tuesday.

I refer, of course, to the local video library: A now bygone relic of an era in which there was no reward without effort and real world actions had real world consequences — especially if you forgot to rewind the tape.

These days of course everyone carries a video player in their pocket but back then everyone had to agree on what to watch.

This led to what a veteran Labor strategist once described to me as “The Video Shop Theory”: Five friends get stuck at Blockbuster arguing over what to watch and so they end up getting a video that everybody dislikes equally.

Today, the Liberal Party is that video.

Think of it as The Pelican Brief. It should have something for everyone: a bit of drama and a bit of action, a bit for the chicks and a bit for the blokes, a bit of Julia Roberts and a bit of Denzel Washington. But if you ask anyone what it was actually about not a soul would have the faintest idea.

This neatly sums up Matthew Guy’s entire Victorian election campaign: There was nothing particularly objectionable about it, largely because there was nothing about it at all.

The only difference is that The Pelican Brief’s excruciatingly average score on Metacritic is at least 50 out of 100. The Victorian Liberals barely got 30 per cent of the primary vote.

Needless to say, the clock had barely struck 6.01pm before the knives came out. Moderates accused Guy of being too right wing, conservatives slammed him for being too left wing, and so Guy had no choice but to go in the only direction he could: Down.

The Victorian result was so apocalyptic that it has also sent the federal Liberals into a death spiral, with a left wing Lib quitting the party, a right wing Lib potentially doing the same and a National threatening to vote against the Coalition on an anti-corruption bill.

And of course there was the usual autopsy to determine whether the catastrophic result was the fault of the state party or the federal party, to which the obvious answer is “Yes”.

The truth is that the absurdist antics of the federal Coalition probably didn’t cause the Victorian opposition to lose the election for the simple reason that the Victorians had already done more than enough to lose it themselves.

The Pelican Brief sums up Matthew Guy’s entire Victorian election campaign. It has something for every one, but if you ask anyone what it was actually about not a soul would have the faintest idea.Source:News Corp Australia

Likewise the routing in Victoria is unlikely to damage the Coalition’s chances at next year’s national election because ever since rolling Malcolm Turnbull they never had the slightest chance to begin with.

But as for the question of whether the conservatives or the moderates are right about the position the party needs to hold, the answer is a little bit more complicated. The problem is they both are.

Much like the Labor Party, which has struggled to marry the values of traditional working class suburban voters and the trendy inner-city ideologues who emerged in the 1970s, today’s Liberal party is in fact almost two completely separate parties — classical small-l liberals who believe in the individual and free enterprise and social conservatives who pine for the “good old days” of the white picket fence.

There has always been tension between these two strands but they have been held together by strong leaders like Menzies and Howard — who famously and frequently called his party a “broad church”. Indeed, it is indicative of Howard’s subtle political genius that his choice of words gave a sense of freedom to the liberals by using the language of the conservatives.

Unfortunately for the party, no Liberal leader since has been so artful. And as mainstream values get more and more progressive and the gap between Wall Street and Main Street is more visible than ever, the distance between urban freemarket values and suburban family values has never been greater.

Say what you like about Malcolm Turnbull or Peter Dutton, at least they appealed strongly to one side of the party or the other. Picture: Cameron SpencerSource:Getty Images

Former leader of the Victorian Liberal party Matthew Guy as he announces defeat in the Victorian state election. Picture: David CroslingSource:AAP

The party is now openly at war with itself and it is hard to see from here how these two diehard factions will ever reconcile. Unlike the Labor Party, where leaders tend to be knifed and installed for cynical electoral reasons, the Liberals’ latest botched assassination came from a place of ideological hatred so bitter and so blind that the plotters attempted to install the least electorally popular candidate they could.

And once that keystone coup inevitably failed, the candidate who was left holding the crown was the one who neither side particularly wanted and didn’t even want to take the job that way himself: Video ScoMo — The Pelican Brief Prime Minister.

Say what you like about Malcolm Turnbull or Peter Dutton, at least they appealed strongly to one side of the party or the other. Morrison, in being forced to appeal to both, ends up not really appealing to either. The problem Turnbull had with the broader electorate, his replacement now has both within the electorate and within his own party. Malcolm in the Middle has now become Morrison in the Middle; the only difference is that Morrison’s middle is not in the same place as Australia’s.

There is nothing the Liberals can do now to avoid a train wreck at the next election, any more than a train driver can apply the brakes after the engine’s already gone over a cliff. All it can do is try to save itself from utter annihilation as a party full stop.

Glum: Former PM, Malcolm Turnbull walks in the rain near his home at Point Piper, Sydney. Picture: John FederSource:News Corp Australia

I wrote last week that the Labor Party needed to stop piss-farting around with identity politics and gender-neutral birth certificates — as they just did in Tasmania — and instead focus on bread-and-butter issues like jobs, transport, education, hospitals and law and order — as they just did in Victoria. Labor might have saved a few votes from going to the Greens in inner city seats with Safe Schools and safe injecting rooms but that wasn’t the main course, it was an after dinner mint. For all his dalliances with easily-triggered trendoids, Dan Andrews didn’t campaign on noodles and needles, he campaigned on cops and trains.

Likewise the Liberal party needs to distance itself from some of the nuttier obsessions of its extremes. Let One Nation have them — there is no benefit in chasing one vote on the right if it comes at the expense of two votes in the middle.

The biggest problem the Liberals have now is that they are supposed to be the best at managing the economy and the budget — and technically they are doing it very well — but people on the ground simply aren’t feeling it.

It’s not much good telling people the economy is booming if their wages are flatlining and it’s not much good telling people the budget is back in the black if charities are having their funding cut.

Despite all the distractions and noise from fringe dwellers in the internet age, political battles must still be fought and won in the middle if we are going to have any hope of surviving as a species.

Victorian Liberal Leader Matthew Guy is joined by former PM John Howard on the campaign trail at Fountain Gate Shopping Centre, before the ‘Danslide’ took hold. Picture: Stuart McEvoySource:News Corp Australia

Just as it is both painful and pointless for the left to preach piously about climate change when miners and steelworkers are worried about losing their jobs, if more workers are secure and well-paid in their employment then efforts to tackle climate change can no longer be used as a bogeyman by the right. And if people can get to work and home to their families on decent roads and rails, then they’re not going to be worried about immigration. This means governments on both sides can bring in the people they need to fill skills shortages and pay taxes to pay for our hospitals, schools and pensioners.

It might be hard work but it’s also simple: Take care of the basics and the rest will take care of itself. Look after the middle and the middle will grow and the fringes will thin.

And, more than anything, just bloody well get on with it. Make a decision and stick to it. It’s better to walk out with a bad video than no video at all.

As the legendary movie maker Louis B Mayer once told a confused director:

“Do anything! If you do something right, we’ll use it, and if you do something wrong, we’ll fix it. But do something and do it now.”

Anything is better than nothing in politics, and nothing is all the government has to lose.